The best alternative keyboards for Android

Andy, you little robot that allows us to customize our phones at levels never experienced before! Your open and easygoing approach to modding the heck out of the interface is a godsend for indulging each and every whim we might have about the way our staple apps should look and behave.

The ability to swap the stock on-screen keyboard with an alternative one is a big part of that open experience, and developers have come up with some of the best ideas in the industry to improve the challenging life of the virtual typist that we all are.

Innovative input methods are pushing the concept boundaries, allowing you to reach levels of typing speed and precision attributed only to ergonomic physical keyboards before, and sometimes even surpassing them. We've rounded up a few of the best on-screen keyboards available for Android, to facilitate your search for the one and only keyboard that will suit your current needs best.

Oh, SwiftKey, can we even stress enough how good you are at what you do? Leaving aside ergonomics, gesture typing, layout customizations and skinning options, which are stellar with SwiftKey, the predictive text algorithms it employs are as good as it gets.

You can grant the keyboard access to your texts, Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as RSS feeds, for instance, and SwiftKey will learn from the way you type there.

Not long after starting to use it, you will notice that not only can it predict your whole sentence without having to type more than a few letters, but it has also adapted to your writing style and most used words as well. How good is it? Well, it's been a constant in the top three paid apps in the Play Store for a while now, and always an Editor's Choice. It recently went completely free, so it's march towards the top gratis app there is a given as well.

TouchPal is used by a variety of phone makers, like Sony or HTC, as their stock overlay keyboard. It combines regular with swipe-style text input, and does it in a compact and polished interface, with a handy keyboard toggle and easily accessible edit buttons. The TouchPal Wave and Curve are unique gesture typing modes that can predict your whole sentence, and TouchPal also offers optional cloud sync, and a lot of add-ons. TouchPal has simultaneous multilanguage input, where it tries to recognize what language you are going for in the next word, and offers the respective suggestions. Auto correction and text prediction could be a bit better, but you are getting a pack of 800+ emojis gratis with the latest TouchPal version now.

One of the best Android keyboards currently, this Artificial Intelligence creation recently got a massive update, capitalizing on stellar text prediction, swipe gesture typing, cursor and editing keys, resizing and customization options. In addition, it features built-in spelling and grammar correction, powered by Ginger. It lacked in the skinning department before, but now features the all-trendy flat and minimalistic design you are accustomed from the newest Android overlays, and comes with cool additional themes, too. The only downside is the somewhat limited language support, and the fact that you have to shell out $3.99 for the huge emoji pack, and the swipe-typing option, but no pain, no gain.

As you can easily guess from the name, MultiLing Keyboard is the best out there in terms of exotic language support, with more than 130 dialects now supported. Want an Urdu or Lakȟóta Sioux layout? No problem, this one has you covered. The new beta has just half a megabyte footprint, is tested in the newest Android L, and sports swipe gesture input. It is resizable, mega customizable, as it allows you to choose your own layout key by key, and can be docked or floated on top of the apps underneath. In addition, the new beta sports a vast choice of theming options, complete with the ability to choose your own color hues within the given theme.

How about having the keyboard that broke the Guinness World Record for Fastest Texting in your hands? Fleksy is a relatively new concept using "Geometric Intelligence" to guess what you meant to type even when you are sloppy and imprecise, or just have too fat of a digit. The tech doesn't just look at the letters you press, but actually where you type, and analyzes your individual typing pattern to understand the word you aim at. Take it for a spin, as it is getting better and better with each update.

The concept of the new Minuum keyboard is minimalism, as it is the only keyboard in the Play Store that is tailored to use with the limited screen space on wearables like smartwatches, and even Google Glass. As a pleasant side effect, it takes up less than half the screen space of regular keyboards on your phone, too, freeing up valuable screen real estate for something else, while still allowing you to type fast and inaccurate as always, flaunting an auto-correction mechanism that rivals the one of SwiftKey.

The learning curve is steeper than with the more orthodox keyboards so far, but it only takes a little while to get used to, and then saves you a bunch of screen space for multitasking, plus the more you type, the better Minuum gets. Unfortunately, it is paid after the 30-day free trial, as most good things are, and doesn't sport a whole lot of language support for now, but the most popular ones are covered.

Google spits out its stock keyboard as a separate download in the Play Store now, and its gesture typing and text prediction options are pretty close to what SwiftKey and the like are offering, lacking only in customizations and skinning options. The new Android L project keyboard, however, goes one step further - it introduces intelligent key resizing that adapts to the size of your digits, the new Material Design theme of Google, presents a different layout, and comes with a ton of new features and emoji. The downside - no finger-swipe gestures for non-English layouts for now.

With a very Swype-like experience, SlideIT supports more than 70 different language packs. It does even more with its handwriting recognition, voice dictation, keyboard customization options, and more than 60 skins and themes to pimp it up to your liking. Its main downside is the lack of a vast emoticons database that TouchPal offers, but if you are not the emoji type, you won't be disappointed.

One-handed typing has been an issue for Android handsets ever since their screens started growing in size to the respectable 6"+ sizes we have now. The folks behind Swype addressed this and many other first world problems with Swype, where you simply slide your thumb from a letter to a letter, forming a word.

You don't even need to be precise, it'll still get it, and that's the best part of this input method, making entering text input faster than anything, even a physical keyboard. You can now even enter words from two languages at once, and you can adjust the long-press delay, vibration duration, keyboard height and mini left/right keyboards in landscape mode. The thing is that, while Swype was a pioneer, many 3rd party keyboards, and even Google's stock Android one, offer this feature, while Swype keeps charging for its app in the era of the free keyboards.

Smart Keyboard Pro fans swear by it, and oftentimes say it is even better than SwiftKey, which it is in certain areas, like Auto-Text. The greatest thing about Smart Keyboard Pro are the customization options, which are so numerous that can make your head swing. There is almost no aspect of the typing experience you can't customize, skin and switch quickly to when needed. Even though it's lacking a bit on language options, as well as the all-important swipe functionality, Smart Keyboard Pro will still make you hesitant to uninstall it after you've taken it for a spin.

Just like Smart Keyboard Pro, GO Keyboard's strong point is customization, like adding custom touch sounds and Emoji, as well as handwriting recognition for those hieroglyph languages, and gesture typing. There is hardly a keyboard with so many skins to choose from, 140+, and new ones pop up every day.

It also has a dizzying array of options how GO Keyboard can look and behave, which are somewhat perplexing, though, and the keyboard is not that stable on many devices, plus it skimps on the Google Voice input for now.

Thumb Keyboard aims to address what many other devs seem to forget, mired in polishing the customization and text prediction options. Our meaty digits are simply too big for the tiny buttons on the virtual keyboards, and we often hit the wrong key.

Automatic punctuation and correction fix those somewhat, but it's an entirely different story when the fat split layout of Thumb Keyboard is under your fingers. Helpful in portrait, but perfect for landscape mode, this keyboard can be used on phones and tablets alike with great precision, and has a regular mode too. The drawbacks are the lack of a trial version, and limited updates as well as language support, compared to other offers.

True to its name, Hacker's Keyboard simply brings a full QWERTY layout, the one you are used to from your desktop keyboard, to the screen of your Android phone. Never miss a key or dive in screens of symbols and settings, it's all right there under your fingertips, including working ESC/Ctrl/Tab and function keys keys. Whether using it on your tablet, or on your phone to manage a computer, this is as close to the real deal as it gets.

Oh, SwiftKey, can we even stress enough how good you are at what you do? Leaving aside ergonomics, gesture typing, layout customizations and skinning options, which are stellar with SwiftKey, the predictive text algorithms it employs are as good as it gets.

You can grant the keyboard access to your texts, Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as RSS feeds, for instance, and SwiftKey will learn from the way you type there.

Not long after starting to use it, you will notice that not only can it predict your whole sentence without having to type more than a few letters, but it has also adapted to your writing style and most used words as well. How good is it? Well, it's been a constant in the top three paid apps in the Play Store for a while now, and always an Editor's Choice. It recently went completely free, so it's march towards the top gratis app there is a given as well.

Type on: The best alternative keyboards for Android

Oh, SwiftKey, can we even stress enough how good you are at what you do? Leaving aside ergonomics, gesture typing, layout customizations and skinning options, which are stellar with SwiftKey, the predictive text algorithms it employs are as good as it gets.

You can grant the keyboard access to your texts, Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as RSS feeds, for instance, and SwiftKey will learn from the way you type there.

Not long after starting to use it, you will notice that not only can it predict your whole sentence without having to type more than a few letters, but it has also adapted to your writing style and most used words as well. How good is it? Well, it's been a constant in the top three paid apps in the Play Store for a while now, and always an Editor's Choice. It recently went completely free, so it's march towards the top gratis app there is a given as well.

TouchPal is used by a variety of phone makers, like Sony or HTC, as their stock overlay keyboard. It combines regular with swipe-style text input, and does it in a compact and polished interface, with a handy keyboard toggle and easily accessible edit buttons. The TouchPal Wave and Curve are unique gesture typing modes that can predict your whole sentence, and TouchPal also offers optional cloud sync, and a lot of add-ons. TouchPal has simultaneous multilanguage input, where it tries to recognize what language you are going for in the next word, and offers the respective suggestions. Auto correction and text prediction could be a bit better, but you are getting a pack of 800+ emojis gratis with the latest TouchPal version now.

One of the best Android keyboards currently, this Artificial Intelligence creation recently got a massive update, capitalizing on stellar text prediction, swipe gesture typing, cursor and editing keys, resizing and customization options. In addition, it features built-in spelling and grammar correction, powered by Ginger. It lacked in the skinning department before, but now features the all-trendy flat and minimalistic design you are accustomed from the newest Android overlays, and comes with cool additional themes, too. The only downside is the somewhat limited language support, and the fact that you have to shell out $3.99 for the huge emoji pack, and the swipe-typing option, but no pain, no gain.

As you can easily guess from the name, MultiLing Keyboard is the best out there in terms of exotic language support, with more than 130 dialects now supported. Want an Urdu or Lakȟóta Sioux layout? No problem, this one has you covered. The new beta has just half a megabyte footprint, is tested in the newest Android L, and sports swipe gesture input. It is resizable, mega customizable, as it allows you to choose your own layout key by key, and can be docked or floated on top of the apps underneath. In addition, the new beta sports a vast choice of theming options, complete with the ability to choose your own color hues within the given theme.

How about having the keyboard that broke the Guinness World Record for Fastest Texting in your hands? Fleksy is a relatively new concept using "Geometric Intelligence" to guess what you meant to type even when you are sloppy and imprecise, or just have too fat of a digit. The tech doesn't just look at the letters you press, but actually where you type, and analyzes your individual typing pattern to understand the word you aim at. Take it for a spin, as it is getting better and better with each update.

The concept of the new Minuum keyboard is minimalism, as it is the only keyboard in the Play Store that is tailored to use with the limited screen space on wearables like smartwatches, and even Google Glass. As a pleasant side effect, it takes up less than half the screen space of regular keyboards on your phone, too, freeing up valuable screen real estate for something else, while still allowing you to type fast and inaccurate as always, flaunting an auto-correction mechanism that rivals the one of SwiftKey.

The learning curve is steeper than with the more orthodox keyboards so far, but it only takes a little while to get used to, and then saves you a bunch of screen space for multitasking, plus the more you type, the better Minuum gets. Unfortunately, it is paid after the 30-day free trial, as most good things are, and doesn't sport a whole lot of language support for now, but the most popular ones are covered.

Google spits out its stock keyboard as a separate download in the Play Store now, and its gesture typing and text prediction options are pretty close to what SwiftKey and the like are offering, lacking only in customizations and skinning options. The new Android L project keyboard, however, goes one step further - it introduces intelligent key resizing that adapts to the size of your digits, the new Material Design theme of Google, presents a different layout, and comes with a ton of new features and emoji. The downside - no finger-swipe gestures for non-English layouts for now.

With a very Swype-like experience, SlideIT supports more than 70 different language packs. It does even more with its handwriting recognition, voice dictation, keyboard customization options, and more than 60 skins and themes to pimp it up to your liking. Its main downside is the lack of a vast emoticons database that TouchPal offers, but if you are not the emoji type, you won't be disappointed.

One-handed typing has been an issue for Android handsets ever since their screens started growing in size to the respectable 6"+ sizes we have now. The folks behind Swype addressed this and many other first world problems with Swype, where you simply slide your thumb from a letter to a letter, forming a word.

You don't even need to be precise, it'll still get it, and that's the best part of this input method, making entering text input faster than anything, even a physical keyboard. You can now even enter words from two languages at once, and you can adjust the long-press delay, vibration duration, keyboard height and mini left/right keyboards in landscape mode. The thing is that, while Swype was a pioneer, many 3rd party keyboards, and even Google's stock Android one, offer this feature, while Swype keeps charging for its app in the era of the free keyboards.

Smart Keyboard Pro fans swear by it, and oftentimes say it is even better than SwiftKey, which it is in certain areas, like Auto-Text. The greatest thing about Smart Keyboard Pro are the customization options, which are so numerous that can make your head swing. There is almost no aspect of the typing experience you can't customize, skin and switch quickly to when needed. Even though it's lacking a bit on language options, as well as the all-important swipe functionality, Smart Keyboard Pro will still make you hesitant to uninstall it after you've taken it for a spin.

Just like Smart Keyboard Pro, GO Keyboard's strong point is customization, like adding custom touch sounds and Emoji, as well as handwriting recognition for those hieroglyph languages, and gesture typing. There is hardly a keyboard with so many skins to choose from, 140+, and new ones pop up every day.

It also has a dizzying array of options how GO Keyboard can look and behave, which are somewhat perplexing, though, and the keyboard is not that stable on many devices, plus it skimps on the Google Voice input for now.

Thumb Keyboard aims to address what many other devs seem to forget, mired in polishing the customization and text prediction options. Our meaty digits are simply too big for the tiny buttons on the virtual keyboards, and we often hit the wrong key.

Automatic punctuation and correction fix those somewhat, but it's an entirely different story when the fat split layout of Thumb Keyboard is under your fingers. Helpful in portrait, but perfect for landscape mode, this keyboard can be used on phones and tablets alike with great precision, and has a regular mode too. The drawbacks are the lack of a trial version, and limited updates as well as language support, compared to other offers.

True to its name, Hacker's Keyboard simply brings a full QWERTY layout, the one you are used to from your desktop keyboard, to the screen of your Android phone. Never miss a key or dive in screens of symbols and settings, it's all right there under your fingertips, including working ESC/Ctrl/Tab and function keys keys. Whether using it on your tablet, or on your phone to manage a computer, this is as close to the real deal as it gets.

4.SleepingOz (unregistered)

Yeah but it doesn't really bother me much, the neon blue works just fine for me. You can still try Smart Keyboard or TouchPal X for better looking themes. We should actually be happy to have the freedom to choose and customize every aspect of our smartphones to make Android such a unique experience, unlike some sub-par OSes.

+1 A theme that fits the Android version would be amazing. I currently use Holo because it's the closest, but I really agree with the need to update the designs of their keyboard. Most of them are very dull, unsophisticated, and unprofessional.

All these autocorrect, predictive are really annoying. People don't use autocorrect in Blackberry or in PCs for a simple reason: they write good enough. There's now an Android keyboard in GooglePlay, TipType, that claims the fastest typing in "non-opinionated" keyboards, because the use huge keys (but a QWERTY letter layout=. I found it amazing after 48hs adaptation. google "TipType record" (I can't post links).

I recommend Kii Keyboard. I find that this keyboard works best for me. I like it because I like Kii's landscape layout more than any others that I have tried. I simply make fewer errors typing with this keyboard compared to others.

Yes. In its latest spin, it's almost as good as Swiftkey, which I tried before, but, with its stupid coupling with Dragon, made it bloated and sluggish. And I can switch languages quickly even in the middle of a text. Too bad it's not available for anything older than Jelly Bean, I think.

I change my words.
Swype is still a champion for me. But the latest Google keyboard (holo grey theme) is awesome and an easy recommendation for anyone wanting a free yet fast and smooth typing experience. :)

I got Swiftkey when it was on sale for 99 cents, but after using it for a few years, I'd be happy paying the $3.99 for it. It's not perfect; my one complaint is when it autocorrects things I don't want corrected, but it makes up for that fact by NOT correcting it the second time I type it, because it realizes I didn't make a mistake. So often you see damnyouautocorrect entries where a person sends the wrong word several times. Not an issue with Swiftkey.

Ultra keyboard is the best all-a-round keyboard IMO. It has a lot of the features of these other keyboards and some features that they don't. I've been using it since I started using android and none of these listed here can match up.

I did try to learn to type with MessagEase, but I just felt that the learning curve was too much. I'm just too used to the QWERTY layout that such a nonstandard layout required too much time and effort for me to achieve proficiency at a reasonable level.

I love Swiftkey but if you use hangouts and click on the emoji button on the keyboard and start swiping through emojis it's super slow(Note 3) compare to android L keyboard but best predictions goes to swiftkey.

IMO Fleksy's overrated. I trialed it for 2 weeks with high hopes, really loved the "invisible" keyboard and gesture inputs features.

However, I went back to Swiftkey in the end as Fleksy's autocorrection engine was just plain useless, even after 2 weeks of manually learning and letting it learn from my social apps. It can't even detect spelling errors like "eevn" or "samrt".

Minuum has a good concept, but my thumbs get pretty uncomfortable having to bend at such angles to keep them at the absolute bottom of the screen all the typing time.

I was using Samsung S4 stock keyboard for awhile, a few months ago switched to Go Keyboard (nice themes, every other aspect sucked) & now I use Ultra Keyboard. No Emoji's thus far but I haven't really looked in to it yet. It has so many different features, nice themes & it's full of customizing options.

With Go Keyboard I had so many issues. It never recognized my personal dictionary. (Annoying)
Even worse are the predictions. I accidently hit the "k"when typing lion, so I typed "klion"... for one, lion wasn't even an option, the only words that it brought up was klondike & Lloyd. Lol.

I was searching a long time for a keyboard and there are a lot. Finally I decided to install a keyboard that it is not very different to a common keyboard but you can customize your own keyboard to write faster and it is great after some days using it. I found it searching in youtube. The name is "Fastest Keyboard Customizable" I think.

The new free "Voice Typing Keyboard" app lets you do truly hands-free voice guided typing and editing in any text field on an Android device. On your phone or tablet, you can input text with either normal speech or letter spelling. Insert punctuation, typography, symbol and emoticon with voice. Move cursors freely in a text field with voice. Erase/insert/revise freely in a text field with voice. Format text with desired capitalization with voice.

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